Two years ago I was renting the cheapest Airbnb I could find in the Mission district in San Francisco, when one night I needed a lighter for a candle, so I knocked on my housemate’s door to see if he had one. I discovered that he was an investor with experience at major tech companies, and we ended up talking for hours. One thing I kept wondering was why someone like him would be renting a cheap Airbnb in the Mission, and when I asked him about it he told me that it helped him find exciting people and ideas to invest in. And it turned out that he was right. Later he invested in my friend’s startup, but that’s another story for another post.
After our conversation I was playing with the following idea: What if he was my father, and he told me: “Nora, here is the money I would have spent on your college education. I’m giving it to you instead so you can decide what you want to do with it.” What would be my first move? Just think about it: there are hundreds of colleges in the US, and many of them charge $60,000 per year for tuition, and that doesn’t even include extra expenses you have as a student (books, tutors, traveling, rent, food, clothes, etc). A college degree ends up being a $300,000 investment over 3-4 years. For me personally, I might skip out on Yale or Harvard and instead choose to pursue my passion for writing, and eventually look to a partner like VaynerTalent to help me build up enough attention and awareness to monetize my brand.
Now of course, building up a personal brand takes time, courage, and a lot of work. Anyone who just wants to do it for the fame is unlikely to succeed. I recently spoke to Lindsay Blum, VP at VaynerMedia, Head of Artist Relations for VaynerTalent, and she agreed that any Talent personality they decide to work with has to have the right mindset and business objectives in order for VaynerTalent to take them on as a client.
“While we are very interested in musicians, athletes, artists, fashion designers, business leaders, and visionaries, we’re open to talking to everyone because you never know where the next amazing story and talent is going to come from. However, somebody can walk in tomorrow, have the money, but if they’re just looking to be famous, that’s not exciting for us. It’s not a good use of our time or their money. Especially since we are just rolling this product out, and we’re a small team, we are very selective with the talent we work with.”
And part of the reason they’re so selective is because it can cost them up to $25,000 a month to service one client. “We’re building a 2017 production company around our Talent,” Lindsay told me. “It’s not just a team capturing content, it’s a team who understands how to work with Talent, how to distribute effectively on social and growth hack on the most relevant platforms.”
She admitted that “being a client of VaynerTalent is definitely a financial investment” but, she believes this allows the clients to hold her team more accountable to deliver results that map back to their real world objectives.
But if the talent is for example not a Hayden Cox, the professional surfboard shaper, who has a massive passion for what he does, you may not be able to achieve anything even if you spend thousands on Facebook ads every single day. Authenticity and passion is the most important thing, that can drive you more traffic than SEO or Google ads.
This week during a personal branding session with one of the bloggers I work with told me : “You know what? Gary Vaynerchuk is so sexy! But when I showed his video to one of my friends, she didn’t get it. She thought he wasn’t handsome at all and even though she doesn’t speak English she thought he always sounds angry.” This is one of my favorite examples of how being clever + having passion and drive + expertise in a certain subject + care + a special message can create a connection with an audience. Gary’s words have a massive appeal precisely because of that mix – if you speak English. If not, you might think that he is just an ‘angry guy.’
Maybe you still don’t really understand how to make money in all of this influencer business. Because let’s face it, brands come and go but if you are able to build your own empire, you can have your own workshops, products, Youtube channel, books, and speaking engagements, so without sponsors you can still have a massive income. One of my clients in Hungary earned almost $5,000 when she launched her online training course earlier this week. If she can do that in a tiny market like Hungary, can you imagine what you can do in the US market?
And don’t forget, starting in 2017 companies are going to be spending much more on influencer advertising. So you can get a piece of the cake, or you can walk away because it’s too much work. VaynerTalent aims to make it as easy for Talent personalities as possible to take advantage of these types of opportunities. Lindsay says, “ We created a strategy that maximizes their energy and output and only takes up minimal time from them each week to create a digital video series. Then the team turns that content into a volume of supporting social content like Medium articles, cards for Instagram, video clips, and content for Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook..”
Most influencers and celebrities probably don’t think they need to pay for a production team to do everything when they have their fans post on social media for them. Five years ago this might have worked fine, but as social media platforms mature, you have to proactively create video content and communicate authentically with your followers. “People think it’s easy, but you’ve got to think about mobile, about news feed, or the fact that people are going to be scrolling past your video if there’s no sound on their phone. If you have no caption, they won’t watch the video,” says Lindsay. You have to think about so many things, that even if you start out managing your accounts alone, you will eventually need a team that supports you, so you can think about the things that matter: like writing a new book, giving an inspiring talk, and so on.
Lindsay says, “Everyone now has the potential to become a media company, to talk directly to your fans and scale, which is a powerful thing.” I totally agree. Even if you’re not big enough to sign on with VaynerTalent, just start putting out content, study and analyze what @GaryVee does, and try to translate it to your own story. Test and try as he often says. For me it took 4 years of active blogging to reach the – as everyone said – “overnight success,” What changed? I found the story that I can tell in a form that worked for me. What’s your story? Start sharing it today. It’s not the number of likes that matters, but how you support the community, because long-term it will pay off, for sure.
Learn more about Gary’s vision for the future of personal branding and VaynerTalent.
Want to get in touch with Lindsay? Hit her up @binzblum on Twitter, Instagram or Snapchat.